In my hip-hop obsessed teens, alongside the Run DMCs and Mantronixs, I had a special thing for the cut-up merchants like Double Dee and Steinski and I guess to an extent people like The Art of Noise. Beats and pieces sampled and scratched together to produce audio collages.
Roll forward into my music-obsessed twenties, and DJ Shadow (alongside other masters like Coldcut, DJ Food and many others) continued these trends, digging through record collections to create music from old.
Endtroducing is still a stunning album. Cinematic, complex, and thoroughly engaging, continuing a tradition started in the 1980s in the age before samplers. And the cover sleeve perfectly evokes the feel and mood of rummaging through the contents of a record shop.
You can see the #51for50 project to date here: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/category/projects/51-for-50/
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